Tuesday, February 19, 2013

The Point

Over the weekend it came to my
notice that the priesthood of another faith transmutes the crime of sexual
abuse of minors into the gold of eternal redemption thus, by taking the sins of
the children upon their own shoulders in each act of Herodian infant-raping
sodomy.Christ-like, as they would have
it.And they do, in their multitudes.

Sethren, I wouldn’t go that far
myself, but it is thus that, though wine is allowed to you, and beer and
any natural fermentation of the fruits and seeds of the good earth, fortified
wine, and particulalry Port of any vintage, we must utterly desist from.Let me assure you that I know this from
bitter experience. Fret not. It will be another
sacrifice from which we can derive strength, courage, fortitude, and the will
to go on. As to yesterday's absence, I would have contacted you on my mobile phone but somehow it no longer seems to be with me. If any of you know of any good sources of such phones, with miraculous contracts which seem, like the charity of heaven, to be without charge or end, perhaps we could have a word afterwards.

And now, sethren back to other
demons, demons of the better sort, demons who do not tempt us to sup from two
glasses at the same time.So far we have
toyed with the idea that a demon is the irreducible meaning of a distributed
existence which differentiates it from all other irreducible meanings.That, you will say, doesn’t give much for the
mind to bite on.So let us take a demon,
and sit it on the head of a pin.Not
literally.Without going further, we
know that a demon is not a thing which can in any sense sit.Or stand.Or fly.Okay.

Let us take a thing, but a very
small thing.Let us take a point.A point with which your finger may be
pricked.A point which may draw
blood.A point is a most thingy thing.You know exactly how it feels.You know, practically to a molecule, where it
is.And yet you cannot see it, as that
greatest of philosophers Flann O'Brian (or he may be better know to you asBrian Ó Nualláin, or there again Myles na gCopaleen, but anyway, he,)
demonstrates at some length in The Third
Policeman.Sure, you can see the
matter that exists upstream as it were from the point (as it might be of a needle).And you can see the empty air that exists in
the other direction.But the precise
point is not visible, at least not to the naked eye.

So a point has these properties.It is thingy (it pricks), but it is invisible.And I say to you (though not with absolute
confidence) that it is irreducible as a meaning.I don’t of course here imply that it is
irreducible as to its properties (stiffness, softness, bluntability, geometry
and so on), or its substance (steel, titanium, wood, diamond, gold).I mean irreducible as to its meaning.That, I believe, is irreducible.And to show that, let us take something very
close to a point, and then look at the difference.Let us take an edge.Not any old edge, like a cliff edge, or the
edge of reason.A very specific edge
with a very specific meaning.The edge
of a blade.The linearity that is equivalent
to the pointiness of a point.Again very
thingy.Take a blade of surgical steel,
the one with which a surgeon may slice through the heavy skin with a single
stroke as the first stage of a journey into the interior.Imagine placing this pristine edge lightly upon
the palm of your hand and moving it, still lightly but steadily, to the place
below you little finger.Whereas the
prick of a point produced a dot of blood, here you will find a line of welling
red.The edge of a blade is nothing more
nor less than a linear point.Just look
at the blood upon the palm for confirmation.

So a point is an irreducible locus of meaning, differentiated from the
edge of the blade by a single dimension, and further in meaning than that from
the hook, the thorn, the fang, the prick (that organ of Divine Penetration in
the eyes of the Curia, which will soon choose another representative of God on
earth),the barb, the lithic arrowhead
and so on.

But distributed about the metaverse a point has other existences, mutates into
other demons.It is part of a Euclidean
axiom, or two parts, being the two points that a straight line is the distance
between.It is multiple in the points of
the compass, it can be anything one is trying to emphasise; or a crucial
function, or adjectivally can describe a remark of, counter-intuitively, cruel
bluntness.Nothing, not even the point
demon, can remain pure and isolated, for demons, though they are a locus, are
set in a material continuum across the universe. But I see the accustomed glazedness.And MadamMeMe’sMagicMeatyBits has not pitched
up today.Is there a rank whiff of the descendants
of Equus ferus caballus on
the benzine-scented breeze.You will
have to forage for you protein slurry in town, my dears.Same time tomorrow.Off you go.

About Me

Old man, still puzzled, amused, horrified by the world. Question struck me, why are human beings, individually so intelligent, collectively so stupid? We have religious, political, factual beliefs that look like certainties. Yet if one lot is right (Yaweh is God, debt is sin) the rest of us are in error. That means most of us are wrong most of the time. How’s that work?
Seems we’re not rational creatures, though one of our special tricks is we can “do” reason. Our big brains are an environment where culture evolves. Survival is the driving force of culture, and a lie can usually survive better than the truth. Culture? Darwinian process in the virtual space where all our brains meet—not mystical, any more than cyberspace. Real, where processes continue. Needs discussion. So I blog about it.
I also have a life. A novel, Bad to the Bone, some plays on. I read, eat, drink a lot. My grandchildren say I swear too much, but what’s just enough? Crazy about mountain and road biking. I talk a bit, my wife says. Love music. The person who I have most admired ever is Wangari Maathai. Brother Jero is just the voice that comes to me when I try to blog about Evoculture.